Syracuse University has no problem with a professor who urged her audience to “finish them off” in response to a group of anti-sharia demonstrators. According to Campus Reform, the powers that be at SU say professor Dana Cloud wasn’t inciting violence, mayhem, bloodshed or chaos.
SU Chancellor Kent Syverud said there was no need for disciplinary action in a statement emailed to the entire campus last week. He doesn’t think she was out of line at all in encouraging the so-called “antifa” (anti-fascist) counter-protesters to do their work.
“Our faculty must be able to say and write things—including things that provoke some or make others uncomfortable—up to the very limits of the law,” he concluded. “The statement at issue is, I believe, within those limits.”
But the protesters who were the targets of antifa don’t agree with the chancellor’s observations.
The anti-sharia protest leader said anybody at the event could have interpreted “finish them off” as a clear incitement to violence or at least a denial of free speech for the protesters.
“Did he [Syverud] understand she was there trying to shut down free speech and not the other way around?” Lisa Joseph asked in response to a tweet about the statement. “That is unacceptable. I was the organizer of the rally and she tried to incite violence against us.”